Tuesday, December 13, 2011

They could have prevented a tragedy

The rundown Brooklyn house where a police officer was shot to death Monday has long been on the city’s radar screen as a trouble spot.

The city has spent $6,500 in taxpayer money on emergency repairs at 25 Pine St. in Cypress Hills and has repeatedly cited the owner for running an illegal single-room occupancy hotel in what is supposed to be a two-family home.

Neighbors believed it was a drug den.

Problems with the building began almost from the day Amanda Sanclemente paid $570,000 for it with no money down in fall 2006. Six months later, in March 2007, the city Buildings Department got the first call alleging the home had been illegally converted into apartments.

Since then building inspectors have visited the house 16 times, the last time in February, records show.

Again and again, callers provided specific allegations, such as "rooms in this house were converted into SRO including the basement,” and “Ventilation system was cut off in the bathroom due to illegal conversion."

Usually the inspectors would visit twice, and if they couldn’t get in, they’d close the case. That happened seven times.

When inspectors managed to get enough evidence of illegal apartments, they cited the owner for violating building codes. Still the illegal apartments and poor conditions did not materially change.

13 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Could have prevented a tragedy?That's a stretch. A lot of tragedies could also have been prevented if we didn't have housing projects. Of course these same people would still live and exist elsewhere. This savage thug could have easily been robbing any other legal apartment or house or individual on the street. The legality of the house or apartment is independent from the fact that a fun toting thug is roaming the streets ready to shoot a cop. I hope they Justin Volpe his ass.

No "they" couldn't have. They couldn't have stopped a group of thugs from killing a police officer simply by enforcing a building law. So the robbery would have happened someplace else, regardless of whether the apartment was illegal.

Yes, they could have prevented this. If the drug den had been shut down, the drug dealer they robbed would not have been living there and it's very likely there would not be 4 girls living without a father now. Crime happens because of opportunity. Take away the enticement and the crime doesn't happen.

Are you arguing that entering an illegally converted SRO is just as dangerous for law enforcement than entering a two-family home? You don't think that had an impact on the outcome?

---------------------------------

Entering ANY building on a 911 call is dangerous because the officers have no way to know who is inside, where they might be hiding or what weapons they might have. That it was an illegal basement apartment had no bearing on what happened as the same scenario could have been played out in any type of apartment.

You're entitled to your opinions about illegal conversions and SROs but its wrong to use Pete's murder as a rallying cry against illegal apartments. It was a thug with a gun who shot Pete Figoski not the apartment.

No doubt the perp and his friends are responsible, and they are going to die in prison. But other factors contributed to the incident: the court in NC for letting Pride go, and whoever sold him the gun illegally. But consider this:

"The events that cost Police Officer Peter Figoski his life played out in five minutes in an unfinished railroad flat illuminated by a single 75-watt light bulb.

The owner rents rooms illegally to single men, and neighbors called the house an obvious drug den.

Pride and his pal took $770 and a cheap watch and tried to flee out the back of the cramped apartment, but they couldn’t find a way out, police said.

All they found was a kitchen and a locked back door.

Pride and his accomplice ducked into a room near the front door, a smallish space full of tools and junk, and watched the two uniformed officers head past to the middle of the apartment, where the tenant lay sprawled.

Believing they were in the clear, Pride and his pal burst out of the side room and rushed for the stairs — where they ran into Officer Figoski and his partner, Officer Glenn Estrada, who were arriving as backup.

Pride’s accomplice, who went up first, began wrestling with Estrada on the street.

Encountering Figoski on the stairs, Pride didn’t hesitate: He shot the highly decorated father of four daughters point-blank in the face with his Ruger.

The bullet hit Figoski under the left eye and exited the back of his head. He collapsed just outside the door to the basement apartment."

Now, if the house had been vacated the scenario wouldn't have played out this way. If the house wasn't carved up into SROs, it wouldn't have gone down this way, either. This known festering shithole was allowed to stay in business, and now there is a dead cop with this address on his death certificate. Why is it wrong to use a death as a rallying cry to fix what's broken? The mayor has no problem using it to rail against illegal guns, and I don't blame him for that, either. If it saves a life down the line, why not?

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